Welcome to our open, self-paced ESL study group. We can and hope to add networks to the group. This blog is the hub where you can find lessons, links to ESL learning resources, leave links to add to the network, post comment and questions. The study group project is experimental. Participate by sharing ideas and suggestions.

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Sunday, June 23, 2013

...free from Coursera and that high intermediate to advanced writers might want to consider taking. This course will run again in September. I follow reviews of courses that might suit study group members and wrote earlier about the Duke composition course. Although that one was "ESL user friendly," this one seems even more suitable.

Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade is another amazing adventure that I have just completed on Coursera. It was offered by Mt. San Jacinto College, and instructed byLorrie Ross, Lawrence (Larry) Barkley, & Ted Blake. The course was broken into five weekly units with each unit spanning one week. Each weekly unit had the following items: video lectures, in-video quizzes, readings, journal writings, discussion forums, peer reviewed writing assignment, and weekly quiz....In general, I enjoyed this course so much considering it as a staring point for being an effective and creative writer. To grow and move forward, I only need to increase my vocabulary base and expose to a variety of writing styles. This can be done by reading more short stories and analyzing their genres to know more about the writers' voices and purposes. I think that there should be another adventure of writing that is coming soon!

Monday, June 10, 2013

Problems with reading comprehension? Here are some suggestions and a useful link to help you figure out for yourself what a passage means. Always try to do that BEFORE you ask someone to explain the meaning:

Ask yourself what the writer's purpose is and who the intended audience (reader) is: why is he or she writing and to whom.

Look up words and even whole phrases you are not sure about.

If you know the name of the author or title of the work, look it up. Knowing more about the work, who wrote it and why will help you figure out what it means.

Try a Google string search on short passages.

If you still need to ask for help here or on the StudyCom Help Board, be sure to include information you have about the writer and the work. That is part of the context. You may be able to answer your own question that way.

Learning how to use context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words is an essential reading strategyandvocabulary-builder. Identifying context clues in reading is made easier by looking for the key context clue categories within the context of an effective step-by-step strategy. So, here's the strategy:

When you come to an unknown word, apply the steps of theFP'S BAG SALEstrategy in the following order until you get a good clue about the meaning of an unknown word.